When sewing machines were so far completed as to be easily run by a hand crank, or treadle, the application of power to run them singly, or in series, and to run machines of a larger and more powerful description, soon naturally followed--so that garment-making factories of all kinds, whether of cloth or leather, have been established in many countries--in which steam or electric power is utilised as the motor, and thus human strain and labour saved, while the amount of production is increased. No radical changes in the principle or mode of operation of sewing machines have been made in the last twenty-five years; but the efforts of inventors have been directed to improve the previously established types, and to devise attachments of all kinds, by the aid of which anything that can be sewed, can be sewed upon a machine. Tucking, ruffling, braiding, cording, hemming, turning, plaiting, gaging, and other attachment devices are numerous. Inventors have rivalled one another in originating new forms of stitches. About seventy-five distinct stitches have been devised, each of which must of course be produced by a change in mechanism. When sewing machines were in their infancy, and confined to sewing straight seams and other plain sewing, it was predicted that it was not possible to take from the hands of women the making of fine embroidery from intricate patterns, or the working of button-holes, and the destruction of the quilting party was not apprehended. Nor was it expected that human hands could be dispensed with in the cutting out of garments. And yet these things have followed. Machines, by a beautiful but complex system of needles, working to some extent on the Jacquard system of perforated card boards, and by the help of pneumatic or electrical power, will work out on most delicate cloths embroidery of exquisite patterns. The button-hole machines will take the garment, cut the button-hole at the desired point, and either, as in one class of machines, by moving the fabric about the stitch-forming mechanism, or, as in another class, moving the stitch-forming mechanism about the button-hole, complete the delicate task in the nicest and most effective manner. Quilting machines have their own bees, consisting of a guide which regulates the spaces between the seams, and adjusts them to any width, and a single needle, or gang of needles, the latter under the control of cams which force the needles to quilt certain desired patterns. And as to cutting, it is only necessary to place the number of pieces of fabric desired to be cut in cutting dies, or upon a table, and over them an “over-board” cutter, which comprises a reciprocating band-saw, or a rotary knife, all quick, keen and delicate, in an apparatus guided by hand, in order to produce in the operation a great pile of the parts formerly so slowly produced, one at a time, by scissors or shears.